Six senior Congress leaders from poll-bound Assam have written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi to change state PCC president Ripun Bora and appoint “anyone” whom the high command deems fit to lead the state unit in next year’s Assembly elections.

Party insiders told The Telegraph on Friday that the letter, written on August 19 when Harish Rawat was the Assam minder, seeking a change of guard was signed by three sitting MPs — Pradyut Bordoloi, Ranee Narah, Abdul Khaleque, Congress legislature party leader Debabrata Saikia and two AICC secretaries — Bhupen Kumar Borah and Rana Goswami.
Rawat was replaced by general secretary Jitendra Singh in September.

APCC insiders, privy to the letter, said they were “compelled” to reveal about the letter after “waiting” for over four months so that the high command could take appropriate and corrective steps before it was too late.

As on day, the state unit was drifting, faction-ridden and faced the risk of suffering another humiliating defeat at the hustings.

The Congress had won 26 of the 126 Assembly seats in 2016 after three straight terms at Dispur at the hand of the BJP-led alliance.

The letter by the six leaders is significant development because Bordoloi, Saikia and Borah are seen as possible contenders for the top post but have “collectively” conveyed to the high command that Bora needs to be changed because, among others, he “lacks” intra-party acceptability, the party’s lacklustre performance under him, the push to stitch an alliance with the AIUDF without detailed discussion and the CBI challenging his acquittal in the 2000 tea tribe leader Daniel Topno murder case, all “hindering” to the “emergence” of the Congress as a serious contender in 2021.

The Gauhati High Court will hear the Topno case next month. Bora, who was acquitted by the lower court in 2014 for lack of sufficient evidence, says the case is a political conspiracy against him.

Bora was appointed PCC president in 2016.

Though three of the signatories to the letter this correspondent contacted declined to comment, the Congress insiders said there has been no change in the situation within the state unit since August when the letter was sent to the party president.

Instead the state unit has been in the news for the “wrong” reasons of late, they said, citing the dismal performance in back-to-back autonomous council polls (BTC and Tiwa), a PCC general secretary Bithika Baruah going public about Bora’s alleged misconduct, a “promising” leader in Kamal Kumar Medhi quitting the party citing “lack of strategy and seriousness” to take on the BJP in the 2021 polls.

Then there was AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal in a TV interview advising party leaders to unitedly fight the Congress, a sitting MLA Sherman Ali Ahmad indirectly criticising Bora over handling the Ajanta Neog issue.

Neog, a senior MLA, was on Friday expelled from the party for anti-party activities. She is reportedly set to join the BJP.

“Moreover, new parties such as the AJP (Assam Jatiya Parishad) and Raijor Dal are more in the news, trying to emerge as an alternative to BJP, a position which should have been ours in the run-up to the polls. But what are we doing: we are collecting signatures in support of Bora with just over 100 days left for the polls. We also need to find out why people are leaving,” one of the insiders said.

“There is even “no” clarity on pre-poll alliances or the issues we will be flagging. It is not enough to claim there is anti-government sentiment unless we can come up with a positive, concrete, doable and an inspiring narrative,” a party insider added, hoping the Congress high command would take some prompt corrective steps to take on a well-entrenched and well-oiled BJP poll juggernaut.

Reacting to the development, Assam PCC media department chief Bobbeeta Sharma said the party gave its best in the council polls and will work even harder in 2021.

On people leaving the party or speaking out of turn, she said such developments are taking place everywhere, whether it is in Assam or Bengal.

“There are opportunists in every party. Sometimes people also leave to avoid harassment. I have not heard what the MLA (Ahmed) has said but then we are all mature enough, we should to know where to draw the line.

“One cannot blame the president for these developments. We need to respect the chair,” Sharma said.